everything about Wearable Technology

Month: January 2009

Becky Stern made acute little DIY project last year combining the LilyPad Arduino and the ‘Open Heart’ DIY project from Jimmie Rogers. Jimmie developed not only the ‘Open Heart’ hardware, he created an excellent simulation and programming software which allows you to design the heart animation via his online tool in an easy way and…

2Joy is a German company which designs and sells Joyshirts, cool T-Shirts with EL-decals. I know, I am addicted to those light-up T-Shirts and always on the lookout for new designs. I don’t like the erratic blinking types although others might just look for such type, and I am looking for fluid patterns not geometrical…

Last weeks announcement about PANiQ, the wearable electronic brand from QIO Systems, expanded the choices for consumer on the lookout for interactive apparel. Fibretronic introduced its wearable electronic brand CONNECTEDwear almost exactly one year earlier, at the begin of 2008, and has been used since then by different brands in great looking apparels and bags….

Leah Buechley one of the leading personalities in the DIY wearable electronic field and creator of the unique LilyPad e-textile platform as well as countless DIY instructions to create ‘soft electronics’ gave recently a talk outlining her new task at MIT where she is heading the High-Low Tech Group. Expanding on her great work in…

Kolon Sport is a Korean based company recognized for their high performance, high-tech outerwear which helps explorers to pioneer the untouched corners of nature in style. By introducing the ‘Smart Series‘ jacket Kolon Sport is challenging the interactive fashion world with a high performance and high-tech fashion product for the coming winter season. Fusing innovation…

One of the biggest Outdoor / Snow Sports fashion trade shows the ‘SIA 09‘ will open it’s doors on Jan. 27 and running until Jan 30 in Las Vegas. SIA is a giant annual biz conference for the snow industry where the big and innovative snow companies reveal their new gear to be released the…

This weeks wearable electronic DIY project comes again from Lynne Bruning and is the best ever I have seen in the e-textile domain – just fabulous. The story of her project, the ‘Sonar Garment‘: assisting visually impaired people by navigating through the world and alerting them when an object stands in their way. The alerting…

The Wall Street Journal picked up in a recent review by Willa Plank the growing need of high-tech gloves capable to allow the operation of hand held touchscreen devices without having to take off the gloves each time an adjustment or phone call is made. Among the products reviewed (we had some covered on talk2myShirt…

QIO Systems, one of the leader in wearable electronic, announced the launch of its PANiQ wearable electronics system making PANiQ the world’s first wearable consumer electronics brand. ‘We are building the next generation of wearable electronics and interactive fashion at QIO Systems,’ says QIO Systems Co-founder and President, John Collins. While QIO and PANiQ work…

If you are a professional talker on a cell-phone or walkie-talkie you might be interested into the Wrist Band Portable Battery from Chinavasion. Although this power wristband might not be something a fashionista want’s to be seen with it might be handy for above mentioned professionals where performance (in this case up to 3 hours…

Rome Snowboards, a young, dynamic and innovative company founded in 2004 sets itself away from the pack by putting design at top priority into their snowboard range as well in their outerwear designs. The tech outerwear collection for this winter season includes the men’s ‘Vagrant‘ jacket and the women’s ‘Swagger‘ jacket both incorporating Fibretronic‘s joystick…

A team of scientist at the Technical University in Dresden / Germany has demonstrated a new display technology that adds to the visible information representation the tactile dimension. The display is formed of hydro gel droplets the size of 0.3 millimeter packing 297 ‘pixels’ onto just one square centimeter, a pretty high resolution. Hydro gels…

‘Moonlit Flower‘ is a cute little DIY project created by Korean designer and mother Ji Sun Lee as part of her TechDIY project. TechDIY is a project for women involving a holistic process of mothers and daughters learning electronics together and sharing this with others. The Moonlit Flower requires some sewing skills, basic sewing materials…

For the third time the Wearable Technologies Conference 2009 as part of the ISPO Winter 09 will take place on February 2nd in Munich, Germany. The focus of this years WT conference will be on Monitoring in Fitness, Sports and Health care, Power Supply in Wearable Technologies and Fashion and Sports design for Wearable Technologies….

New York City-based interaction designer and teacher Younghui Kim created the ‘Stir-It-On!‘ skirt, an interactive skirt hat reacts to any close encounter on the surface of the skirt such as bumping or touching. Younghui got the inspiration for the ‘Stir It On!’ light effect by bioluminescent bay organisms called ‘Dinoflagellates’, a type of plankton that…

Fibretronic introduced last year the CONNECTEDwear system that allows consumer to mix and match their interactive clothing with any and every function needed. This system together with ‘CONNECTEDwear ready’ clothing makes the reuse of the electronic part of interactive clothing beyond the current fashion season possible as the electronic part usually will last longer and…

Baybox, a German company is working on the mediaVEST which should make life easier and safer for the gadget wielding reporter and bloggers during harsh outdoor conditions. A couple of considerations go into the design of the mediaVEST: addressing the negative effect of freezing temperatures for the wearer and the multimedia device. Humans dent to…

The magic of light entered again our coverage, this time in form of an incredible looking sneaker, the Onitsuka Tiger Sunotore 72. Japan’s Onitsuka Tiger has been around since 1949 and is specialized in the manufacturing of sports shoes using original ideas and applying innovative, epoch-making techniques. The Electric Tiger Sunotore 72 trainers have been…

The background story of the first e-textile DIY project the ‘Senior Remote‘ is as lovely as the project itself of transforming a hard plastic TV remote control into a cute soft remote control. Intructables user ‘unknownuser2007‘ wanted to make life easier for mom to navigate her TV as she does get confused with the countless…

Right after the Smart Fabrics Conference in Rome another highly interesting event around smart textiles takes place on March 18 and 19 at the Royal College of Physicians, London, UK. Titled the ‘Innovations in Textiles 2009: Smart, nano and technical textiles for medical, industrial and clothing applications‘ will bring together multiple disciplines and various technologies…

Looking to the extreme low temperatures in parts of US and Europe I was looking around for jackets that keep comfy warm in the most extreme temperatures and look cool/chic. Heated clothing comes to my mind but many of the products on offer are kind of bleak and black. Burtons LTD Heated Dream Jacket for…

Want to add some sparkle to your wardrobe, cushions or bags? Neon Trim has a wide selection of soft, flexible Neon wires for DIY enthusiasts to add light elements to clothing and more. The site is full of information about how EL (Electroluminescent) wires work and how to use them. Getting the next rocking stage…

IntertechPira released the final program details for its 5th Smart Fabrics conference which takes center stage from March 10-12 at the Holiday Inn Rome West Hotel in Rome, Italy. The fifth edition of the Smart Fabrics conference is packed full with high profile speakers and presentations. To serve the growing number of available information and…

What better, bigger start into the new wearable electronic year could there be as to announce the availability of the ‘king of interactive clothing’ the long awaited NavJacket from O’Neill. The NavJacket is not only cool, it is uber cool as this sophisticated jacket comes with an sophisticated social networking tool that allows the uploading…

One of the big challenges in wearable electronic: speaker which can be fully and seamless integrated into clothing transforming a T-Shirt into a speaker system. NXT‘s surface mount system is so far the closest solution but still it requires some bulky sound engine called ‘exciter’ to transform semi stiff EVA into s sound emitting surface….

Welcome back to talk2myShirt which is running on a new, bigger and faster server to serve you our dear reader in 2009 fully energized and ready to take on the opportunities and challenges of 2009. Before looking into the wearable electronic crystal ball to check out what 2009 will have in the Interactive Fashion store…